I guess we all have our preferred methods, that suit how we work.
Back in the day, I tried drawing lines, but found it took me ages to work out where to put them. I just keep planing until I get the shape I want. And since I never went into the duck dive thing, I've always gone for volume, for ease of paddling. So since the late 60s all my boards have had a domed deck, the only flat part is near the nose. So I've got fairly used to making the deck a continuous curve by eye.
But yes foam goes everywhere!
I find a wet/damp banister brush shorts the static, and stops the stuff clinging.

Yeah , this new styrene stuff goes and sticks everywhere . In the old days u just swept it off the floor.
Next im going to say ...... bloody kids these days,
Fy.k I'm getting old
I'm still using stringers.
Thats got me thinking , what about 3mm coreselll carbon lam stringer . Got to weigh near nothin , Got to be great in a board flexing way , ( also solid in a vac bag ) , and great support for the mast track.???
Would the support of the mast box sitting on a stringer require less glass around the box trying to stick to it from Above on spongy soft foam ???

don't ask me, I haven't used stringers since 1967

I was born in 1967 , I'm only half a hundred.
I lived when cotter pins went extinct and bmx was invented.
And when SunnyBoys had frees .

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Imax1 said..
I was born in 1967 , I'm only half a hundred.

Well I'm not quite 3/4

Wood stringers are unnecessary.
The glass is stronger....... so the wood does nil. I think the surf industry has clutched onto them for posterity and the expectation from the consumer (who is misguided...)

For a WS board a stringer is better done by cutting a slot after shaping, poking wet carbon into it and then laying it over onto the deck - instant T-stringer.
T-stringers were used a bit in 2004-8 ish age boards but not now, so possibly not needed, or stiffen board too much.

I'd be interested to learn if they are good or not...

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Imax1 said..
So u go blank , corecell then 2 layers glass , why not blank glass corecell glass ?
I think I understand top toughness , but I know I can improve weight as I way over engineer.

No, there is glass under corecell. Has to be for a good bond. I left that out as I assumed you did that and was just asking about outer lam

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Mark _australia said..
Wood stringers are unnecessary. The glass is stronger....... so the wood does nil.>>>>

in 1967 when I walked down the beach at Scarborough, with my 9' no stringer, everybody laughed, expecting it to break 1st wave.

They didn't know I'd been talking to Midget at Crescent Heads, he'd been explaining to me that stringers just added weight, his boards certainly didn't break.
I'd already seen a snapped in half repair at Margarets, where the glass had been striped back right off the blank about 150mm each side of the break and re-glassed with no glass overlap, just a butt joint against the old glass. I couldn'y convince the repairer that was a bad idea. So he paddled out and caught a wave OK, but it snapped in half again as soon as he hit a bit of chop, didn't even make it to the first bottom turn!
And yes you guessed, it didn't snap on the old break, it created a new one at the glass butt joint 150mm away from the old.

So Midget was already preaching to a convert.

We did end up cutting the blanks down the middle, but not to add wood, just a coloured glue line as a shaping aid.

The Mistral I'm repairing had a 5mm X 20mm gurit stringer but it only had glass halfway down and no carbon, the gurit was also craked in several spots, but that may have happened when the bottom was removed.
It certainly didn't stop the delam!
But may have helped stabilise the rocker during manufacture.

Just droping in here guys. Whats the average cost of materials to build a board? Ive never attempted one, but am keen to give it a razz. SLW kinda thing for 105kg pilot.

^^^
Being a newby , mabee I can answer.
It can vary a lot. The first time u have to buy a lot of things for initial set up , ( tressles , tools ,wire cutter , vac bag system , a place to do it etc , it does go on ) . Second board is a lot cheaper because u get to use left over materials.
Depends on fancy materials used.
Even though I've made a dozen or so boards , that was in the old days with old days materials and technique. I had to re learn everything about new construction ( and still learning ) , the only skill I really had was the shaping itself. So I overused and wasted a LOT of resin. Having said all that ( keeping it short ) and having most of the set up my first new half carbon board cost about $ 1000 next one probably $ 600 . People who actually know what there doing , a lot less.
So for your first time think around one gorilla for parts and consumables. and that would be with borrowing stuff and before a vac system.

Imax1, so when you migrate north bring all the gear with you. Show me the ropes. Itd be cool to ride something i created.

Ouch. I am being a bit lazy with the corecell, (could use less if joining it) plus an expensive resin system, and it will cost me about $700. Imax you have some gold plated bits?
;-)

^^^^
No gold just over bought stuff because I didn't quite know how much I'd use. Especially resin. And the cork I used came in a 50mtr roll , stuff like that .The resin I used came in 3 litre ( not enough ) and 12 litre and I used two thirds of that , ( half of that was excess set in pot and on the floor ) , that I will improve on . That's why my next board will be cheap cos I got soo much left over.

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olskool said..
Imax1, so when you migrate north bring all the gear with you. Show me the ropes. Itd be cool to ride something i created.

I definitely will , I have ideas for a floaty Coloundra speed special that can carry a 9.5

Hey Mark what density foam did you get? what size and where from?
Oh and thanks for the fin box construction pics

Today's bit, and an answer for Imax too
A lazy day with just the mast track block bunged in. But sometimes its nice to just do a small job then sit back and look at it, absorb the lines. You always see something that needs a slight touch with the paper...




So Imax. No the mast track box is not sitting on squishy foam. If all goes well, the mast base sits on a wide area of extra carbon and glass layers. Those are on top of a high density foam block..... and as you can see the sandwich later will go on, holding the block secure, then the mast track inserted. It is not only the insert that takes the downward force, really the insert is just a guide for the nut. . But even if it did take all the force, then its on 80-100kg/m3 foam and the box is bonded at the sides (side takes a shear loading, not just the box flat on the foam) plus it has glass around it.
The high density foam block is not just sitting on the styro - it is bonded above to the high density foam layer over the whole deck (yet to go on) so it is supported from above also.

Or yeah, the Cobra way with a bit of glass and some foaming resin additive around a plastic insert............

^^^
Good to see some solid engineering , I like it.

Top layer thermoformed.









I was a little concerned the new Corecell M foam has a higher thermoform temp - about 105deg vs the old one which was about 75 or 80.... but need not have been. It formed easily with the heat gun and the blank didn't get warm. As usual though, corecell is just so lovely to form compared the the old divinycell and others that split easy. That was really an art

Wow, no tape along the edges and no cuts at the sharper bends, that looks to shape as well as airex.

How thick and hard is the corecell ?

Its only 3mm 80kg but to be made up for with some funky cloth and wood :)
On the other hand we did 3-5mm in PVC foams like divinycell etc back in the day ....... corecell is not a PVC, its a lot stronger and has amazing elongation before it breaks. So maybe in the last say 8yrs, 3mm is the new 5mm....?


Decrep - will need a serious relief cut at nose about 5mm wide and 15mm inwards, and very thin slivers at the points of swallowtail. A rounded pin may not. Bloody swallowtails

That's very interesting . Which comes first , cloth or wood ? Got to be glass last ???
On my last bottom I used 13 kg eps , 4oz ish carbon , 3mm saturated cork , 2x 4oz glass and it is tank armour . More than enough under the heels , let alone all over and extra. , as I said I'm still learning.
Blank + glass +corecell +funky glass and wood , would have to be strong as an ox.

^^^ Yeah always glass over wood, to avoid the nasty degradation issues we saw in some boards, particularly Starboard, say 10yrs ago.
I reckon carbon and glass with full wood deck then another proper glass layer over is the top notch construction method.
I was amazed at the strength of a full carbon and wood NuEvo I worked on a couple months ago.
And not just wood patches in oval shapes like another brand has done, and the factory plonked them in the wrong places, plus even then you don't only step in a couple of small areas and there are other forces at work, so they just broke 1" in front of the wood area. I repaired 4 of them last season. DUH
Maybe their initials stand for Just Plonk minimal wood anywhere, so u can claim it.....

Anyway, waiting for some carbon from an eBay seller so I can't do the deck sandwich yet. Mongrels listed it as being in Melbourne, yeah right then it is "The warehouse tells us they have run out so we had to go to our HK warehouse " blah blah wank wank more Chinglish ........
but hey $20 a metre instead of $80 and you sometimes have these little problems.......

So I spent time getting inserts ready.

I always just bunged footstrap inserts in with just glass around and some q-cell bog, and they don't rip out with a proper glass-over....but another site got me thinking. For the addition of a few grams, if anyone uses too long a screw then water can't get in .... why not. Plus I have a few acres of divinycell blocks to get thru.....
Will cut up into little pretty rectangles later.
The routing went well with bourbon and Japanese techno music. Except for one offset plug that I did backwards, still pondering if it was the bourbon or Japanese deeptrance.

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olskool said..
Just droping in here guys. Whats the average cost of materials to build a board? Ive never attempted one, but am keen to give it a razz. SLW kinda thing for 105kg pilot.

Vary wildly, blank can be free or cut already, (surf board type) YOu would need multi yards of Glass, some carbon, some reinforced material , cell of some type, epoxy to fix together, vacuume bag system , mast track, footstraps inserts, fin box.footstraps , Some apparatus to hold while shaping/curing . Tools to cut, shape, sand .

You can recycle some parts from a donor board.

If you have a burning desire to make a board, rather than buy a 2YO, the cost would be near.

I would take a board from early 2000, and reshape the nose and tail, extreme would be fin conversion, rails, move mast track forward, move footstraps forward. Board cost $50, materials prob $400.

Hi Mark
Just wanted to say thanks for sharing this build, I am enjoying the read,
I built a few superlight styrene epoxy boards back in 1988, so it's bringing back a few memories,
Cheers
Tony

Thanks for the kind words all :)


Its back in the bag, deck being squished on
Deck is not fun, gotta wet out glass and carbon on the table, transfer to board, get the corecell layer on straight, tape to hold, in the bag and full vac pulled before the resin gels

Luckily temp is right for the fast system I am using, but I sill only had maybe 15 mins to spare.

Still stress though anytime its in the bag is a nervous wait....

And gotta do something while ya wait

Sanded off the top and cut out the inserts. The extra bits are to offset the front strap on wave-riding side (starboard for me)
I don't think I will need it as this board rides beautifully for me, but I don't like to open my straps up quiiittte as much as some of the pro types do nowadays, plus I have wide feet anyway, and doesn't hurt to have that extra tuning option. Besides, cutting 5hole inserts down and chucking 2 holes away seems wasteful

Forceten, yeah a bit of gear n cost. But i like to build things. Built n fitted out my 6.7m plate alloy sportfishin rig. Nothing better than rippin along on something youve created yourself. These project builds are awesome Keep up the great work guys.

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Mark _australia said..
Thanks for the kind words all :)


Its back in the bag, deck being squished on
Deck is not fun, gotta wet out glass and carbon on the table, transfer to board, get the corecell layer on straight, tape to hold, in the bag and full vac pulled before the resin gels

Luckily temp is right for the fast system I am using, but I sill only had maybe 15 mins to spare.

Still stress though anytime its in the bag is a nervous wait....

Looking good Mark, im trying to work out what are those clamps for?